“A Man, A Magic, a
Music” is a one-man show starring Movin’ Melvin Brown,
playing at Geva Theatre Nextstage
as part of Fringe Fest. The piece is essentially Brown’s life story as told
through a retrospective of black pop culture from the 1950’s through the early
21stcentury. Brown
was bitten by the showbiz bug at an early age and he never got over it.
He’s spent his life ever since singing, dancing, and telling stories.
Brown
is known as “Movin’ Melvin” for a reason — he’s a
fantastic dancer. In this show he taps, clogs, and even does a striptease (that
was…a surprise). His movements are full of joy;
effortless. Frankly, it’s a shame that he doesn’t dance more in the show.
Instead, most of the 90-minute program is devoted to Brown
singing either snippets or full-length versions of classic songs by The
Platters, Sam Cooke, and other legendary black artists. Those icons clearly
had a profound effect on Brown and his career, and he skillfully mimics them
here, slipping in the mannerisms and inflections of Ray Charles, James Brown, Louis Armstrong.
But
while dancing seems to come naturally to Brown (astonishingly, he says he took
up tapping fairly late in life), you can hear how hard he’s working whenever he
sings. His voice is fine, and has the soul required to sell
the gospel, blues, r’n’b, and other genres featured
here. But he struggled significantly with his upper register at the performance
I attended.
There
was also an uncomfortable moment where the show came to a screeching halt when
a music cue was missed leading into “When the Saints Come Marching In.” Brown
eventually got things back on track but it was awkward for a solid minute or
so. He’s a pro, though, and knows how to woo an audience through his genial
nature, a laid-back vibe, and some very funny jokes that he nicely underplays.
I felt the show went on too long, but the rest of the crowd seemed to eat it
up.
(“A Man, A Magic, A Music” also takes
place Sunday 9/22 3 p.m., Tuesday 9/24 6 p.m., Wednesday 9/25 9 p.m., Thursday
9/26 7:30 p.m., and Friday 9/27 8:30 p.m. at Geva
Theatre Nextstage. Tickets cost $16.)
I
did not respond at all positively to “Bag
of Tricks,” put on at MuCCC by Juxtapose. The
description of the event promised hip-hop aesthetics mixed with contemporary
ballet, and group members started the show by teasing a variety of props and
several surprises. The big surprise for me was that there was so little
dancing. I recognize that there are basically no rules in modern dance. It is
what you want it to be. But up until the fourth and final number, in which most
of the group’s dancers were up and continuously moving (one still spent the
bulk of that number rolling around on the floor in a bunch of crumpled papers),
the pieces were largely defined by dancers either standing still with expectant
looks on their faces, or walking/running around the stage in unison.
Quiet
moments and stillness can be effective punctuation tools in dance. But when
that’s the majority of what you’re giving an audience, with only brief bursts of
actual movement, the content comes off as so subtle that it verges on
nonexistent.
As
for the props, each of the four numbers did indeed concern one or more everyday
items. In the first, the dancers moved through a small sea of balloons on the
floor (except for the one helium-filled smiley face that the dancers all
coveted). In the third, a dancer picked up, threw down, or let a table fan blow
around playing cards. In the fourth the aforementioned crumpled papers —
apparently dozens of those fortune-telling squares kids used to make in grade
school — were…just kind of there. Which brings me to my point: props can be
extremely effective when deployed properly, and I think this troupe had some
interesting intentions when selecting the objects. But the items were used so
inconsistently throughout the numbers that it seemed, to me at least, that they
were cool ideas that were never fully fleshed out through a dance vocabulary.
By
the second number, inspired by Audrey Hepburn, I realized that what Juxtapose
has going for it is impeccable style. From the deconstructed clothing items in
the first piece to the visually interesting dresses in the final number, these
numbers actually seemed more like moving fashion spreads than dance
performances. Which is not a bad thing. It’s just, for me, “Bag of Tricks” was
a clear case of style over substance.
Local playwright Nancy Preston Stark’s “Ping” has been performed at least once or twice before, and I keep
trying — and failing — to see it. The grown-up sex comedy has always garnered
good reviews. I finally caught Greater Rochester Repertory Companies’
production of it Saturday night at RAPA’s East End
Theatre, directed by Allan O’Grady Cuseo. Indeed, it
is a charming 60-minute play that will appeal in particular to older audiences,
but still elicited laughs from viewers of all ages.
Denise Bartolo plays Phyllis, wife
of recently retired hypochondriac Dick (Peter Elliott). When the play begins
Dick is a mess of neuroses, and Phyllis urges him to talk to his doctor about
what she assumes is a case of depression that some medication might mitigate.
Dick’s doctor does indeed prescribe some pills, but not the kind Phyllis was
expecting. This medication improves Dick’s mood by putting lead back in his
pencil, and soon Phyllis finds herself exhausted by all the unwanted sex she’s
getting. Enter undersexed, overly flirty next-door neighbor Lil (Diane
Chevron), who might just provide a solution to the problem — or inadvertently
make it worse.
Stark’s script is topical and has a nice, rapid-fire cadence.
The cast shares an easy, realistic chemistry, especially Bartolo
and Chevron as gossipy buddy neighbors. A nice, frothy respite from some of the
darker material I’ve seen at Fringe.
(“Ping” will also be
performed Thursday, September 26, 6 p.m. at RAPA’s
East End Theatre. Tickets cost $10.)
“SaMeSeXShAkEsPeArE” closed
out the night on a high note at the TheatreROCS stage
at Xerox Auditorium. This production by the Shakespeare Players swaps the
genders in some of The Bard’s most iconic scenes. In some cases, there was barely
any discernible change, such as the “Henry VI Part 1” scene in which three
actresses played Prince Henry, Falstaff, and Ned Poins.
But in others, swapping a woman for a man (or vice versa) in one or more roles
had a profound effect on the way the material came across.
For instance, Marcy Savastano
delivered Hamlet’s legendary “To be or not to be” soliloquy and then shared a
scene with Nicole Skelly as Ophelia. Having a woman
deliver the “Get thee to a nunnery!” rebuke somehow made it more gut-rippingly brutal, and Savastano’s
Hamlet was more believably conflicted rather than blatantly dick-ish than any version I’ve ever seen. (Although, confession:
I have never seen a portrayal of Hamlet that I didn’t want to slap upside the
head for a being a giant whiny brat.)
The protagonists’ first meeting from “Taming of the Shrew”
featured Brad Craddock as Petruchio and Mark Casey in
drag as Katharine. I found that the power differential of the couple was
suddenly more even, but that might have been the fiery connection between the
two actors. Not a syllable was wasted in that very funny exchange. On the
tragic front, Carl Girard made for a heartbreaking Desdemona in “Othello” in a
delicate performance opposite Suzanne Bell’s Emilia.
The biggest revelation of the show was the fully
gender-swapped exchange between Angelo and Isabella from “Measure for Measure.”
Here Craddock played the chaste young innocent begging Jillian Christensen’s
lustful judge for the life of his brother. In the original play, Angelo is
unquestionably a scumbag, using his power and position to blackmail a would-be nun
into having sex with him. Suddenly, with a woman in the dominant position, it
seems a lot less skeevy and a lot more
sexy, while the Isabella character as a man seems hopelessly naïve. It’s
disturbing to think that what comes off predatory and repugnant one direction
is almost a game the other way around. I suspect that reflects more poorly on
our current social values than it does on Shakespeare’s writing.
The entire show is impeccably acted and moves swiftly. The
material feels as fresh and relevant as it ever did. Anyone with a passing
interest in Shakespeare will likely find something of interest here and should make
sure to catch the show before Fringe wraps.
(“SaMeSeXShAkEsPeAre” will also
play Friday 9/27 6:30 p.m. and Saturday 9/28 5 p.m. at the TheatreROCS
Stage at Xerox. Tickets cost $9.)
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2013.
I think you meant to identify one of the Shakepeare plays as “Henry IV Part 1” not “Henry VI Part 1.” While Falstaff was still alive and appeared in Henry VI, young Prince Hal (aka, Henry V) was already dead and gone by that time.
Alan Frost: I checked the program from the show and it was indeed labelled as “Henry VI” by the Shakespeare Players. However, a quick Google search suggests that you’re right, that scene was indeed from “Henry IV, Part 1.” Thanks for pointing that out!